Modelling of dark fermentation from household organic waste based on modified ADM1

In this study, the IWA anaerobic digestion model N°1 (ADM1) was used to simulate and predict the dark fermentation process of a complex organic substrate: household waste. Since ADM1 does not account for metabolic products such as lactic acid, ethanol and some volatiles fatty acids like caproate, that appear during the dark fermentation process, the structure of ADM1 was modified to include them among the produced metabolites. Due to the complex structure of the substrate, a Contois model was included for the disintegration and hydrolysis steps instead of first-order kinetics. A global sensivity analysis using the variance decomposition based method was also performed to identify the most sensitive model parameters. The modified ADM1 simulated satisfactorily a batch experiment.